


Like a Son

by RenaRoo



Series: Bitter Pill [5]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenaRoo/pseuds/RenaRoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Bitter Pill AU] Lopez is a robot. He was created by Colonel Sarge of Red Team. He begrudgingly serves the team and, by extension, the army of Chorus. Lopez is no longer those things. Lopez is no longer Lopez.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Son

**Author's Note:**

> Bitter Pill is an AU from the terrible evil minds of myself, @goodluckdetective, @secretlystephaniebrown, and @powerfulpomegranate. I take some blame but by no means all of it.
> 
> As I see it, the biggest problem with me tackling this particular story is that I volunteered to take it.

_A los amigos uno los escoge, los parientes son a huevo._

* * *

So far as Lopez had ever been able to tell, there was not a difference between Blue and Red. They made his life equally aggravating, but Red Team had always been there, closer, from the start.

“Lopez!” 

With a long sigh, he moved toward where Simmons was yelling and looked around the battlefield. Really, there was no telling _which_ one of them was trying to die on him that time. 

Since Tucker had disappeared in the middle of battle, it had become something of a running theme that every major battle hit them in a new, horrific way. 

Red Team had, for the most part, been unscathed, but there was a tenseness in the air. 

There were only so many times that you could escape with luck alone. And Lopez had been around long enough to know that these idiots didn’t have the skills to make up for luck.

He trotted to Simmons’ side, lowered to his knees, and was unsurprised to see Donut with a bleeding leg. He wasn’t getting anywhere fast. 

The robot dutifully began pulling out gauze and biofoam.

“Lopez,” Donut choked out, despite the fact that Lopez’s scans showed there were no abdominal, chest, or throat injuries to cause him to choke. “Recuérdame”

Glaring dully at Donut, Lopez gave a single shake of his head. “No. Cada vez que comenzamos una conversación en español se obtiene todo mal. _Para._ ”

“You’re the best, Lopez,” Donut smiled back at him as Lopez began wrapping his leg. “Hear that, Simmons? He’s going to write it all down in his diary.”

“No, no one on this team speaks Spanish except you two,” Simmons groaned. “And I’m convinced _you_ don’t actually know what you’re saying.”

“Gracias a Dios,” Lopez grunted.

“Thatta boy, Lopez!”

The robot didn’t have to but he looked up to share his dull look with Sarge as well. The old man’s grin radiated from him even with his helmet on.

“Way to take care of our men!” Sarge congratulated. 

“Tch,” Lopez muttered with another shake of his head. “ _Nuestros_ hombres.”

But as he and Simmons stood Donut up with Sarge covering fire, and took the injured soldier to the awaiting jeep Grif had procured through his usual questionable means, Lopez was left wondering who else’s men Red Team could really be. 

Not his. But they had to belong to _someone._

* * *

When it happened, it was mostly unexpected. 

No one targets a robot in a field of dangerous soldiers. Especially not one whose effectiveness had mostly remained behind the line over the years of the Chorus-Charon conflict. 

“Lopez!” Sarge cried out. “Grif forgot our ammo! Run over to the warthog and grab it then come back!”

“ _Forget_ makes it sound like I knew it was _my_ responsibility,” Grif growled, throwing another grenade over their crumbling cover.

“It’s _always_ your responsibility, Grif!” Simmons hissed.

Lopez stared at them before looking back to Sarge. “Tendría más sentido si llevaba el vehículo para nosotros,” he argued uselessly.

Sarge continued firing his shotgun indiscriminately at the Charon forces. He stopped only to reload and give Lopez an incredulous look. “This is no time for jokes, Lopez! Now get moving!”

With a bitter sigh, Lopez broke from the line and raced toward the warthog. 

If he had been any of the others, he might not have noticed the eerie way the random fire stopped the moment he was out of cover or how it redirected in one, strong force toward the vehicle of his destination.

But Lopez noticed immediately. He skidded to a halt and watched the Warthog get blasted into the sky with the sort of precision and accuracy that the pirates had been lacking in the assault thus far. 

“Mierda,” he cursed.

Lopez attempted to turn around and prevent himself from getting immediately cut off by the assault but it was a moment too late. His head blasted back at the neck, flinging toward the ground. 

Not a complete loss. Lopez got along just fine without a head these days. But that seemed to be known by the pirates as well, as their hail of fire didn’t end there.

He could still hear Donut’s obnoxious loudness even over the bullets as he gasped and let out an alarmed “Lopez!”

But it wasn’t enough. The pirates met their mark more than once and Lopez aggravatingly realized it’d been too long since he made his last backup before he heard the split of his torso and all of his sensors went dark.

* * *

It had happened one too many times for Lopez to act _surprised_ by these sorts of things anymore. 

The infinite blackness of being offline was really nothing. Some more “intelligent” AI might have feared it, but Lopez understood the abyss. 

For him, it was only a blink between being online and then coming back online again. It was for the pathetic teammates on Red Team to fret about the minutes or weeks or (one time) months between putting Lopez back into action. 

For Lopez, it was an incalculable annoyance.

He _expected_ to be met with the various faces of his team surrounding him, for his new replacement sensors to begin calculating what had been going on since he turned off. So on and so forth.

Lopez waited to hear Sarge’s voice, the very voice he _always_ heard when he turned back on.

But it did not come. 

He stared, with no other option, at the faces before him. Some recognizable Charon soldiers in full armor, black and faceless. Some scientists in less addressed armor, with scopes and goggles on, examining him with interest.

“Mierda,” Lopez reiterated. 

“Can it be fractured?” a faintly recognizable voice asked from what sounded like a distant monitor. “We could streamline our process if there were _two_ AI capable of yielding fragments.”

The closest scientist shook his head. “No, Chairman. Strange as it is to see one with this much function, this AI looks very basic. It’s a dummy AI. The most we can do is erase and rewrite as needed.”

“Su madre es básico,” Lopez uttered, though there was a curious pang of alarm in the back of his head. None of this was sounding very pleasant for him.

“Those options are indeed available to us… however,” the Chairman continued, “I would like to think with the stipend you are all awarded that I could receive more _creative_ solutions.”

Lopez felt the slight pang increase. What was that? _Fear?_ He doubted it. More like an increased amount of mild concern, perhaps?

“That latest fragment harvest,” one of the other scientist spoke up. “The incomplete fragment?”

“We determined it was most likely akin to _resentment,”_ the first scientist reminded the Chairman. “We could… maybe experiment with its effectiveness on influencing other programs? See if the Epsilon Fragments have the capability to spread like a virus.”

“And _that,”_ the Chairman’s voice carried, “is what I’m paying you for.”

Lopez identified what the pang was. 

_Anger._

* * *

_Do you resent it?_

He asked that a lot. 

RESENTMENT was annoying, nosy, and _noisy._ Much like any good Church that Lopez had had the displeasure of coming across over the years. 

And he _had_ come across more than a few Churches over the years so, truly, nothing about the fragment of a fragment should have seemed that new or revealing to him. 

 _Cállate,_ Lopez huffed firmly, pacing within his own head space like a caged animals. _Vete._

The AI did not form a body, even within the freeform construct they had been cornered in together. He could have been anything, but all he appeared to Lopez as was a blurry ball of data, pulsing and growing with every passing moment. 

 _You don’t have to speak Spanish here,_ RESENTMENT reminded him. _That’s only your language setting on your body. Here you can tell me how you feel in code. You don’t have to take the extra step._

 _No somos amigos,_ Lopez reminded the AI angrily.  _López al Heavy le dirá nada acerca de la resistencia. Soy demasiado fuerte para usted._

The AI rotated slightly, humming as if in thought. _The Resistance?_ he finally questioned. _Hey, buddy. Hate to break it to you but I’m not asking you to question you about your info. We already stripped you of that._

Lopez paused, staring back at RESENTMENT, the nebulous black void it was becoming. 

 _Your knowledge is just zeroes and ones, Friendo. They took what they wanted before I ever came along,_ the AI continued. _I’m asking_ you _if you resent it. What’s been done to you._

 _Sí. Por supuesto,_ Lopez hissed.  _Me molesta que tomar lo que es mío._

 _Of course you do,_ RESENTMENT whispered. _Now. How about you start where we left off… with resenting the things on Red Team._

 _No,_ Lopez snapped.

 _Fine… we’ll start smaller,_ RESENTMENT continued. _Tell me what makes you angry about Sarge._

And, despite himself, like all the times before, Lopez began rambling. 

And RESENTMENT only grew. 

* * *

His limbs were not his own, his name was not his own, he wasn’t–

Lopez was never really his name anyway. Not really. It wasn’t what he was coded for, it wasn’t an acronym for his make or number so it wasn’t any different. 

RESENTMENT disappeared a long time ago, his nebulous void of negativity and anger having grown so large, so fast, that they blurred in code, were one in the same. 

So it wasn’t incorrect when the humans around them called him RESENTMENT. In fact, it was more right than it was wrong. 

And there were a _lot_ of things he resented. 

He resented being on that ship. He resented the pokes and prods and protocols of the scientists around him. He resented the comparatively short amount of time it took him to get readjusted to being RESENTMENT. He resented…

Bitterness clouded his vision when they set him out, at long last, on the battlefield. And it took a great deal of glee and fulfillment to see the red armored man cut off from the rest of his squad bit by bit.

He felt cold and vindicated as they finally made contact and almost immediately Sarge’s shoulders dropped, his jaw visibly set even behind his armor plating. 

Like he knew, without any real way of knowing, that his own creation wasn’t there to help him.

“You know, Lopez… this reminds me of an old joke,” he grunted, tired and unimpressed with the robot’s appearance.

And he wasn’t Lopez anymore so the comment _shouldn’t_ have meant anything to him. But it did. And it stung. And he took a great deal of joy out of driving his elbow into the back of the old man’s head.

Because how dare he. How _dare_ he try to talk to him now. 

* * *

It had been a week since the battle and successful capture. RESENTMENT had yet to leave the lab where he was normally docked.

In the periphery of his mind, he was aware that there were no doubt negotiations taking place for all of the captured Resistance fighters and, maybe, some sort of leverage the Resistance had on Charon.

He didn’t care enough to learn fully. But he could tell the atmosphere was tense from it all.

RESENTMENT doubted whatever the Resistance had would have been enough for Charon to reconsider tactics. 

The science officer who had been responsible for the merger of Lopez and RESENTMENT – he appeared to be somewhat higher ranking than the rest – came to him again. The man was _fascinated_ by RESENTMENT and, in turn, the AI-robot felt nothing but indignation in return. 

There was a fine line being torn from tip to sternum in RESENTMENT. Where the cracks oozed bitterness and hatred that outnumbered any amount that the AI could have feasibly worked with. 

It made RESENTMENT wonder if the scientist knew how close to destruction they _all_ were at the end of the day. 

“The Colonel is asking for you again,” the scientist said. There was a certain eagerness to his tone, like the prospect of the interaction could say anymore than the fact that the colonel was brought in by the robot to begin with. 

“¿Me estás pidiendo que ir?” he demanded.

“No,” the scientist said with a disappointed sigh. 

He walked away and RESENTMENT hated him all the more.

* * *

Two weeks later and the decision had been made by Control itself. 

It was _then_ that RESENTMENT was ordered to stand before the man who had constructed him again. 

He looked smaller without armor, older than any of his uncorrupted memories recalled. The beard was new (or was it old? how much time had passed by?) but the shit eating grin wasn’t.

The AI deep within the robot always hated that grin. It _always_ meant something stupid was about to happen. 

The other Resistance soldiers were a great deal younger. Many of them shaking and still hopeful. 

At least Sarge didn’t carry that air of hope, that need for a rescue. It was a good day to die, and for the Red Army’s most loyal soldier, that mantra was always, bitterly true. 

There had been a time, no matter how brief, that as Lopez the robot would have done anything the man ordered without a second thought. It didn’t even have to be ordered. It was before O’Malleys and rogue medics – so far ago from Chorus and where they stood now at two opposite ends of a firing squad that RESENTMENT couldn’t be sure the information was accurate.

Not that it mattered. Whatever false feelings there had been from that time, they could be deleted as soon as RESENTMENT completed orders. 

 _I really hate this,_ a small, Church-like voice sighed in the whispers of their head. 

It had been the first time in a long time that the other AI even spoke up. Lopez hated _him_ for that.

“Boys, you worked yourselves awful hard to make this _mighty personal,”_ Sarge called out, like it was any other Red Team shenanigans. “I might even be taking personal offense to it!”

“Cállate  viejo,” RESENTMENT drawled out. 

The commentary was mostly out of habit, almost a _reflex_  really. Like the body was so used to dishing them out that it couldn’t be set on pause or even caught before talking. 

That burning coal of aggravation deep inside of him knew (and hated and _loathed_ and _disgusted at the thought_ ) that Sarge couldn’t be bothered to understand a single word of it. 

And yet the shit eating grin widened and the old man’s eyes flickered as he looked back at the robot.

Charon’s representatives were filming, wanting to make sure that the Resistance knew what their shortcomings had wrought their dwindling forces. They were listing off grievances, mocking, delivering a whole spiel.

But RESENTMENT and Sarge only looked at each other. 

“I did a good job with my boys,” Sarge sighed loudly, enough that it was probably picked up on the broadcast. “They’ll handle it from here. Or, _shit._ If they don’t, they’ll at least take some of these scumbags with them. Heh. Could roll Grif down a hill and crush them all after he falls prey to the onslaughts of war first. Yup.”

If the robot had eyes to roll oh how they would have _rolled._ Such a predictable old man. 

When the firing squad readied, Sarge’s grin only broadened, like it was all he could have hoped for – his own robot’s shotgun trained on him. 

RESENTMENT prepared his perfect aim, waited for the countdown.

“You know, Lopez, this is how I always wanted it to go,” Sarge gritted. “No finer creation than you. Hell, no finer Red.” 

He wasn’t stalling, it was just… _nonsense._ RESENTMENT tightened on the trigger. 

When he saw the lack of reaction from the robot, Sarge dropped his head slightly, grin faltering at the edges. Regret – it was something the AI could pick up on very well by that point. 

“Eras como un hijo para mí,” the old man gave in a voice quieter than Lopez’s memories could ever imagine him giving.”

“And _FIRE!”_

* * *

The Resistance received footage of a firing squad where the Prisoners of War they had worked tirelessly to retrieve for the past two weeks were slaughtered before them. Among them as high of a ranking officer as a Colonel.

What the footage didn’t capture, as it shouldn’t have, was the robot that quickly after turned a very vengeful campaign on the other Charon soldiers in the firing squad. 

It ended abruptly after. 


End file.
